Changes to Bombard?

[contributor]

Were there some changes to bombard and the ability to reduce planet quality? In my current game I can't seem to get my ships to reduce planet quality with Bombard, or at least it's very rare. I just circled a quality 4 xeno planet for 4 turns with my newest Space Invaders and Bombarded every turn. I reduced the quality to 2 and population to 10 before my ships started blowing up. Maybe I'm doing something wrong in the design?

[fallen]

contributor - I think the salient response question is "changes since when?"

[contributor]

I guess it's been awhile, but is reducing planet quality supposed to be insanely hard?

[elwoodps]

Apr 19, 2016 8:38:08 GMT -5 contributor said:

.... I just circled a pop 4 xeno planet for 4 turns with my newest Space Invaders and Bombarded every turn. I reduced the quality to 2 and population to 10 before my ships started blowing up. Maybe I'm doing something wrong in the design?

If your design is old enough, that's a big part of the answer.  What constitutes good Invasion Transport design changed radically starting with v2.3.1.¹  The other thing that's likely hurting you is bombarding repeatedly. Successive attacks of the same type, turn after turn (e.g. Bombard, Bombard, Bombard,...) become less effective and more costly in terms of damage to the attacking Transports.  You become predictable, so the Xeno can focus their defenses where you're going to strike.

¹ See Cory Trese 's posts in the Planetary Invasion Discussion Thread.

[contributor]

Thanks elwoodps, I guess the strange thing to me is that the same ships can spam invade and clear out a colony of twenty xeno in 2-3 turns, but if I want to nuke the whole planet from orbit that's going to take way longer and I'm going lose ships just to get rid of 4 quality. Really Bombard should be much safer and easier than invading because you're raining ordinance out of the sky, but invasion would seemingly take a little more care and commitment of those heavy mechanized brigades onboard.

[tenbsmith]

As I recall, bombarding was intentionally nerfed in version 2.3.1, with the idea that it should be difficult to reduce a system's quality to 0. Some players were creating 0-quality buffer zones around their empires, and the designers felt that was inappropriate.

[acecow]

Though...it's a legimate, if morally awful, strategy, scorched earth anyone?

[contributor]

Hmmm, I guess that it is good to eliminate exploits, but it seems like that one comes at a serious cost to the simulated realism of the game. With the current dynamics I'll almost never create dead planets because it is so much more difficult and costly than invading. Playing the Garden map that's a major hassle because I don't really want to colonize the remaining 70-some planets. In STRPG dead planets play an important role in the lore and dynamics of the game. Too bad.

[contributor]

Apr 20, 2016 12:15:59 GMT -5 acecow said:

Though...it's a legimate, if morally awful, strategy, scorched earth anyone?

Morals don't come into play when you're fighting the Xeno.

[tenbsmith]

Exactly lurker, creating a buffer zone of 0 quality planets was too effective, so an exploit. I just couldn't think of the term when I wrote my last post.

I agree scorched earth, or pretty much anything that works, is a reasonable tactic when dealing with Xeno.

[acecow]

I dont see it as an exploit though, its a strategical decision. Maybe less so because we aren't really resource starved, and its just about denying the enemy some planets...but its still a legitimate strategy.

[fallen]

We did not call it an exploit, but there was a change of balance in that release.

It is still a very valid strategy, just harder to achieve.